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Carolyn's GLOBETROTTER #3 - December 4, 1999
I love Indian food! Chicken Korma ... Aloo Gobi ... Lahsooni
Gosht ... Sambar ... mmmm! And I really want to learn how to cook Indian food
well. This, I quickly discovered, means a lot more than just looking up a couple
of good recipes.
After all, Indian cuisine is among the most complex in the
world, with quite distinct regional approaches to food. The secret, they say, is
in the spices but it’s much more than a matter of learning how to spice foods
for an authentic taste. I also don’t know my moong dal from my masoor dal, in
fact, the names of many of the ingredients look unfamiliar to me. And I’m not
sure which foods are typically eaten with which, nor much about the cooking
techniques.
It was not immediately apparent, however, where to go to
start learning about Indian cuisine. Yeah, I know. I can just go to the
bookstore and likely find a suitable cookbook. And actually that was my first
step. But I quickly realized that I didn’t really know enough to be able to
discern a useful cookbook from a waste of money – that I wasn’t yet ready to buy
anything. So I thought I’d better scout about a bit on line before I plunked
down some hard-earned cash on a book that might be worse than
useless.
Portals – at least North American portals -- are not
necessarily the best place to start either. For example, about.com, often a good
source of specialized information, was about as ‘white bread’ as you can get.
All the food was parked under the home/family section (a bad sign) and there was
nothing like a sub-category for Indian food. 4anything.com didn’t have Indian
food listed at all under their ‘International Flavours" section – Irish food, it
would appear, is about as ‘ethnic’ as 4anything gets (no offense Grandma).
Sympatico, a fairly useful Canadian portal, housed recipes for diabetics, not
tasty global tid-bits, in its "specialized cuisine" section. Oh, they did have a
couple of recipes of the "add two teaspoons of curry powder" variety. Some
didn’t even look too bad. But it’s not what I was looking for. I wanted more of
a holistic and cultural approach to the food -- to learn about the cuisine!
Yahoo was the best of the portals. It featured a long list of plausible
Indian cuisine sites (under "culture," not under "recipes," a much more
promising place to locate such information). Yahoo’s recommended site, that of
Chef Sanjeev Kapoor www.sanjeevkapoor.com, was exactly what I needed – Indian foods and cooking techniques
explained in simple language to a foreigner with an interest in learning how to
cook some of the foods as they are eaten in India (and in Indian restaurants
around the world) rather than finding recipes whose only connection to Indian
cooking is that "curry powder" is one of the ingredients. The site had a
glossary of ingredients commonly used in Indian cooking, a regional food guide
with a brief and useful description of the most characteristic food types of the
different regions and their historical and cultural origins, instructions for
basic ingredients and a spice guide. It also had an extensive list with
literally hundreds of Indian recipes and online animated lessons to prepare six
selected dishes (I tried Chole).
Still not quite satisfied, I decided to follow up a lead
that one of my editors had given me and have a look at the Topica lists. Topica
is a web site that hosts e-mail lists and offers a number of features to list
owners including searchable archiving, list promotion, and some privacy
features. Sure enough, one of their numerous cooking lists is called ‘Indian
Cooking.’ Ah, this could be what I am looking for. A community of people
committed to discussing and learning about Indian cooking. Unfortunately, after
a spate of two communiques in February of 1999, there has been nothing on the
list. And what there had been was a little too spare. But I really like the idea
of connecting with others who are also learning about Indian cooking and people
who are in a position to share their knowledge and skills. I think I may scout
around for a more active list.
Meanwhile, you’ll find me hanging out with Chef Kapoor
trying to sort out my fenugreek seeds from my Gohbi Musallam.
Till next time,
Carolyn
The
skinny:
Recommended:
Yahoo
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